Supporting State Posted by Michael Signer

The rash of violence in Iraq continues, with two Iraqi officials assassinated and 18 more dead yesterday -- an insurgency driven at least in part by local resentment driven by a lack of trust in the occupying forces.  The same dynamic's in place in Afghanistan, too, where there was a massive anti-American riot yesterday. 

Local understanding, based on patient, long-term knowledge of local politics and culture, and long-range thinking about trends and attitudes toward America -- does this sound like a job for (a) the military?  Or (b) professional diplomats at the State Department?

If you answered (b), you win the prize.

Last night, I was at a dinner with Lorelei, several Hill staffers, and an Army officer who has been involved in the reconstruction of Iraq.  The conversation -- over middling but cheerfully served Greek food right near Capitol Hill -- circled around several topics, but most consistently returned to a single glaring focal point:  America lacks a professionalized diplomatic corps to put in place long-term planning and strategy for the world's hot spots.  And our politicians too often lack the will to sell diplomacy to their constituents.

The military right now is leading most of our foreign policy, a trend that has been growing for the last generation.  Pre-war and post-war planning on Iraq has been performed primarily by the Department of Defense.  Our "strategies" in Iran and North Korea are largely being quarterbacked by Defense, too. 

The Department of Defense employs over 2 million active duty and civilian employees.  The State Department, boasts a measly 30,000 professionals. 

And guess how many members are on State's hard-working and underappreciated Department of Policy Planning staff?  Less than twenty.

It's hard to tell whether their budgetary power stems from their prestige, or vice versa.  But neither helps when it comes to promoting diplomacy in in trouble areas during the vicissitudes of, say, American Congressional elections, when being "pro-defense" takes on the caricature of being "tough on crime" -- without thinking about what smart tough means. 

Democrats afraid of being branded "weak on defense" embrace any and all military spending, and authority, at the expense of State -- the assumption being that if you support diplomacy, you don't support national security. 

But this is just hogwash.  America's moral, political, and historical authority will only be strengthened if we manage our interests around the world in a more efficient, clear-eyed, and strong-handed way.

This isn't to say we should just embrace the State Department.  Just as Suzanne Nossel has been pointing out in these very pages for months, we can cheer the general mission of the U.N. while advocating substantial reform. 

And so it goes with State.  We can embrace the institution while advocating for tough reform -- more modern facilities, better management, better training, better coordination.  Check out Jamie Metzl's excellent memo to George W. Bush on "State Department Renewal" for some ideas.  While you're at it, check out the Partnership for Effective Peacekeeping's site for analysis of our priorities.

There's also the deeper issue of whether the military should be running American foreign policy in general.  This is an issue both of practice and principle.  We have a civilian military.  In general, our military leadership is supposed to be following the directives generated by the domestic, democratic political process.  It is not supposed to be initiating the political and policy decision-making shaping decisions in places like Iraq, North Korea, and Iran, much less China. 

For all of these reasons, Donald Rumsfeld's canny, and highly personal, gamesmanship becomes worrisome from a historical, trend-setting sort of way.  When he slapped Colin Powell around, it didn't just endanger Powell's peace of mind.  It risked setting the Defense/State balance even more off-kilter, generationally-speaking.

During Rumsfeld's regime, the familiar cycle has taken place, but at a breakneck speed and with higher stakes:  professionalized diplomacy, and policy planning, routinely disintegrate, and then the military, crisis thinking, and domestic political pressures join in a trifecta of ad-hocism.  Not good -- not efficient, not sensible, not effective.  And very expensive.

As I chewed away at my Greek lamb, it all made me somewhat more troubled than I'd previously been about Iran and North Korea.  I want to know that our federal government and our embassies host professional diplomats with horizons longer than four years, who understand these countries to the marrow, and who have America's -- not a party's or an ideology's -- interests in mind.

Comments

[praktike]

this really chafes me, too, m.s. but rumsfeld has actually been trying to reassert civilian control over the military because he thinks that the CINCs and the Chiefs got too uppity and powerful during the Clinton years. Of course, the problem is that Rumsfeld and his pals are ideological hardliners to the core, so you're replacing military pragmatism with militant nationalism. And of course, reasserting civilian control over the military has nothing to do with boosting the capacity of the State Department. The budget of the Pentagon is, what, 25 times that of the State Department, and the latter doesn't have nearly as much capacity for marshalling domestic lobbying coalitions of the willing because they don't have pork.

What about bolstering State's clout by putting USAID under its wing?

[DonkeyHawk]

Reenforcing State is a must, but so is building our military endstrength. A report released today by Third Way lays out a compelling argument that, under President Bush, America's armed forces - and the Army in particular - have been hollowed out relative to threats we now face, and that 100,000 more active duty troops are needed to match manpower with mission. Democrats, and Senate Democrats in particular, should embrace the report to not only outflank the Republicans politically, but also do the right thing by our men and women wearing the uniform.

[rosignol]

America's moral, political, and historical authority will only be strengthened if we manage our interests around the world in a more efficient, clear-eyed, and strong-handed way.

...I hope you realize this is an endorsement of the Realists, such as Rumsfeld, and emphatically not of the 'Progressives', such as yourself.

In general, our military leadership is supposed to be following the directives generated by the domestic, democratic political process.

Ah, no. The military leadership is supposed to be following the instructions handed down the chain of command, starting with the President.

[Achillea]

Whatever happened to that McCain/Lieberman bill regarding strengthening both diplomacy and military options I was hearing rumors about a couple of months back?

[manoppello]

Hmmm, I am surprised to hear a military officer say that. Both the NSA and the CIA have placed significant resources into developing exactly what you describe: "patient, long-term knowledge of local politics and culture, and long-range thinking about trends and attitudes toward America ". Out here many people like to think that the foreign language institute run by the Navy is one of the best in the world. The very best in the world resides in Linthicum, Maryland and is operated by the NSA. Despite a past where mathematics and cryptography were at the fore, I suspect that the NSA has put greater emphasis on these "softer sciences". Much of the staff trained three is active military. The CIA operates similar resources.

Therefore, you might ask your "connected" dinner companions why the active military types trained at the NSA and at Monterrey were not deployed in Iraq specifically to act as translators and cultural liasons for our forces there? Why does the military always complain about a shortage of "translators" when they have these fine academies and their graduates? Why did the state department for so
long have to avail itself of the services of Farsi/Arabic fluent George Cave for ongoing informal talks with Iran, for so long, given these institutions and the native speakers who instruct at them, and the many graduates who graduate from them?

Maybe Rumsfeld should worry about base closures and streamlining forces after he determines if the resources they do have are being used effectively. Because from my perspective, given the aftermath of this conflict, this has not been the case.

[Lilith]

Rosignol,
I am amazed anyone would call our current administration's policies Realist. They are driven by a philosophical, not pragmatic agenda. Rumsfeld takes a stand believing that he knows what the result will be, and when the result isn't what he expects he lies and dances around the truth. Look at the the wonderful warm reception we are experiencing as liberators of Iraq, and how well the battle plans, laid out by our Realist worked in the REAL World. If you have any doubts about the how well this has all worked out, just enlist for frount line service in Iraq.

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